Scooting off to jail and other stuff

First of all, today is D-Day, June 6, 2007.

It's the 63rd anniversary of the greatest invasion in history. It marks the day when a few thousand men glided, parachuted or waded into Fortress Europe. Winston Churchill called the Battle of Britain the end of the beginning of World War II. This was the beginning of the end for the Germans and their allies.

This is all in the way of saying thanks to all you guys (I don't think any women landed on June 6) who made the journey on that day.

An now, as Paul Harvey says, Page 2.

Closer to home, the New Haven Board of Aldermen, to the cheers of advocates, passed the nation's first Welcome Wagon for illegal immigrants when it accepted about $250,000 from the First City Fund Corporation to pay for identification cards for illegal aliens.

The cards are to allow the illegals to have official identification in order to open up bank accounts, get into city parks and take out library books and the like. The idea is to shield the illegals from crooks who prey on them because they carry cash. New Haven is the first city in the nation to do this.

There has been a lot of publicity surrounding this move because it is controversial and is a first.

So what do the brilliant feds do?

Less than two days after the alders pass this thing, they pull an immigration raid in the heavily Hispanic Fair Haven neighborhood. Read all about it in the New Haven Independent at
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2007/06/feds_sweep_fair.php

Of course, the feds say one thing has nothing to do with the other, that La Migra (for those of you unfamiliar with the term through knowledge or Cheech and Chong movies, La Migra is the Spanish idiom for the federal immigration cops) was due to be in town looking for people on fugitive warrants. Of course, once they raid an apartment or a house, the check the identifications of everyone there.

According to the Independent, by late afternoon Wednesday, about 29 people had been detained on warrants and immigration beefs.

So, are the feds' raids boneheaded, especially after President Bush said he advocated a way for illegals who are already here to earn the right to legally stay here?

Or are they brilliant demonstrations to show the government's, or at least the Bush Administration's, base conservative constituency that law-enforcement isn't going to let a few local advocates and politicians get in the way of protecting the nation from the scourge of the undocumented.

Be that as it may, I have a couple of concerns of my own .

Some of them are discussed in a previous post
http://mindoflen.blogspot.com/2007/05/good-intentions-breed-bad-idea.html

They have to do with hooking up the debit card approved Monday by the alders, which one presumes will be managed by the city, to bank accounts. That would create the possibility of an error that would expose city residents to, among other things, identity theft. If you must have the debit card, please have it refilled only by request and not automatically taken from bank accounts.

Second, please make the identity cards one way of getting into parks, the libraries and other city services. Please don't make them the only way, thereby forcing city residents to obtain such a card. We don't need a mandatory city identity card.

The feds want to require an internal passport that would somehow keep us safe from terrorists, presumably as long as they don't carry tuberculosis.

Seriously, city fathers and mothers, please offer these identity cards. Don't require them.


Page 3.

I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, formerly one of the most powerful men in Washington, yesterday learned that he's going to be the guest of the federal government for 30 months.

That is, of course, unless the guy who really should be tossed in the slammer for arrogance and hubris, among other things, decides to pardon him.

Well, there's the question that may be hanging over official Washington and those of us who follow such things: Will Scooter Libby do all his time or any time at all.

That's two questions and I think those questions have two separate answers.

The first question is whether Bush will issue a pardon how to prevent Libby from having to do any time at all. I think he will not do that. It just may be getting through to Bush that his legacy is in real trouble.

He is enough of a political animal to know that if he pardons Libby now, whatever wheels still attached will fly off the Republican presidential bus and he'll be handing the Democrats the White House. That would give the liberals a chance to undo all the conservative and religious traps that Bush has so carefully crafted with his Supreme Court picks and other moves. Whether the Democrats are smart enough to take advantage of that is a question for another time.

I think Bush is crafty enough to leave the pardoning for next year, after the election. I think he will wait until the post-election hoopla is in full swing and then sneak this in, like he sneaked John Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations in when he thought nobody would notice and couldn't do anything about it if they did notice. Wrong on both counts.

So, Scooter, spend the two months before you have to report to prison in choosing some good books, making book contracts and in general preparing to spend at least the next year and three months doing time.

But I could be all wet. As a reader to astutely said, you'll never go broke betting on Bush's stupidity.